The Last 3 Days (17): Stowaway

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25:38:37

His socks hadn’t lasted an hour. Now barefoot, Nick kept to the grass verge on the side of the road. Up ahead he could see what he thought was a small town.

He heard a truck approach from behind him, so he raised his left arm, thumb out.

The Greyhound bus didn’t slow.

25:36:19

Bobby was first out of the elevator when the door slid open. Ducking as if reaching for a loose football, he swept up a trash can in his arms and followed through by smashing it through the glass door marked Thurro Cleaning Company.

He turned to receive his due praise, but Ryan stepped past him and unlocked the door. He still had his key to the office.

Bobby peered into the dim office over Ryan’s shoulder. “I told you Thurro wouldn’t be here.”

“But something here will give us his address,” Ryan answered as he navigated broken glass and loose trash.

“I’ll look on the computer.”

Ryan walked down the hall towards Thurro’s office, but one office door stopped him in his tracks. On the door of the office that should have been his, freshly painted was the name, ‘JAY TAYLOR.’

Returning to the lobby, he picked up the lid of the trash can, hefted it once and then dropped it. He reached past Bobby and snatched at the telephone console Louise, Thurro’s eternal receptionist, used to orchestrate the company’s incoming business.

The meagre wires connecting the console to the world were no match for Ryan’s fury, nor was the glass of the door when he swung it like a mace to demolish his rival’s name. Ryan walked on to Peter Thurro’s office.

Seated at the reception desk, Bobby called out, “What’s your log-in and password?”

Ryan turned at the door. “Just ‘Ryan’, password ‘prince’ with a number ‘1’ for the ‘i’ and a ‘3’ replacing the ‘e’. All lower case.”

As he moved into Peter’s office, Ryan swept the shelves clean with his arms, scattering everything into piles in his path. He sat down at the desk and cleared it of its clutter, then punched the computer monitor so hard it hit the opposite wall.

All that remained on the desktop was a framed photo of Peter posing with his father on the elder Thurro passed the company on to his son and an antique desk lighter Grandfather Thurro purchased to light his occasional cigar.

Ryan pulled the photo to him. “You’re gonna regret firing me.”

Suddenly, he grabbed the lighter and smashed it down again and again, crushing the glass into glittering dust and obliterating the frame.

“Hey, Ryan,” Bobby called.

Examining the lighter, he flicked it, producing a healthy flame. He fished the photo from the wood and glass shards and held the corner to the flame.

“Ryan! I found it.”

Ryan stood, dropped the burning photo and headed out.

Behind him, the paper litter flared.

Bobby stood beside a large credenza that matched the giant desk, his fingers ready to pluck the page that accompanied the printer’s hum.

“It’s just printing,” he told Ryan as he emerged from the hallway..

The printer expelled a sheet of text. As Bobby reached for it, the printer hummed again and spit out a second page.

“Damn. It’s printing everything.” Bobby sniffed, then looked up. “Is that smoke?”

Ryan ignored his friend, instead watching thick grey smoke crawl along the hallway ceiling from Peter’s office, which was fully aflame. The worn carpet smouldered.

Bobby snatched the additional output but the printer hummed once more. He grabbed that page, too and rushed into the hallway. It was only when he asked whether it was safe to take the elevator that he realized Ryan hadn’t moved.

He rushed back into the smoke, took hold of his friend’s arm. “Ryan! Come on!”

25:31:54

The Greyhound bus slowed, then veered onto a dirt run-off outside a small diner, raising a dust cloud so dense it erased the world beyond the tinted windows. A good number of the passengers, eager to smoke and stretch their legs, herded one another forward, even though the door remained closed.

“Wait for the dust to settle,” advised an anonymous voice.

The first man in line, on his way home from the oil fields judging by the black smears staining his once-fluorescent jacket. “Fuck the dust. I need a smoke,” he said, and threw himself at the door. He bounced back, catching hold of the handrail for balance and to bring a steel-toed boot into play.

The door swung open with a hiss. The kick robbed the rigger of his balance and then he was a tangle of uncoordinated limbs that fell from the lowest step to sprawl in the dirt. He sat up and dug a pack of cigarettes from a pocket as the other passengers moved around him.

One passenger, seated near the rear on the driver’s side, pretended to sleep and so hide his scarred face.

25:30:12

Nick felt a rush of hope when the bus pulled up outside the diner and picked up his pace, the random stings of rocks on his bare soles suddenly worth it.

He watched a neon-clad figure tumble from the bus to land on the ground in a heap. A few passengers disembarked to stretch their legs, followed by what looked like a grey bubble slowly swelling in the doorway. For a moment the bubble ceased to move, and then like a cork from a bottle, a very obese man in a Greyhound uniform hopped from the bottom stair.

Nick noticed that the passengers moved aimlessly, silent, though they shared haunted, sombre expressions.

The driver held his right arm against the bus to minimize a natural lurch in the short distance to the luggage hold. He unlocked the hatch and stepped aside to light a cigarette. He watched Nick hobble across the gravel towards him.

“Hi,” Nick said.

“Keep walking, kid,” the fat man replied. “I’m all out of change.”

“I don’t want money. I need a ride home.”

“No problem. Twenty-seven dollars will get you to the bus depot downtown.”

Nick held his palms out. “I don’t have any money.”

“Then I don’t have any room.”

“I’ll stand.”

The driver shook his head. “Against the law.”

“Please,” Nick begged. “I just want to get home to my family before — “

Tossing his butt away, the round man shrugged. “Not my problem, kid. No ticket, no ride. Move on.”

A solid thunk from behind him pulled the driver’s attention away.

An angry suitcase was assaulting the bus.

“Hey. Hey!” He shouted. He swung his belly into motion and followed it.

Nick noticed the open hold, glanced at the Driver’s back and then slid in, burrowing between luggage pieces and out of sight.

The aggressive suitcase calmly slid into the hold and the door shut, leaving Nick in near total darkness. A moment later, the bus jolted into motion.

25:22:54

Becky served scrambled eggs to Olga and Eileen, seated at the dining room table.

Eileen could not remember ever being happier than she was in that moment. “They smell divine.”

As she lifted a mouthful, then noticed the other women looking behind her. She lowered down her fork and turned.

Jay, clad only in his underwear, was a mass of bruises. Using the wall to stay upright, he croaked through swollen lips, “Need Don.”

Eileen rushed to him. “You need to be in bed.”

“No, Jay answered. “Nick — “

“Nick? What about Nick?”

“Ryan took him.”

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Also published here.